LOOKING IN ON: GAMING

By Liz Benston (contact)

Friday, March 30, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

When Glenn Christenson joined Station Casinos in 1989 as chief financial officer, the company operated a single casino and then-President Frank Fertitta III had big dreams of creating a chain of properties across the valley.

Christenson, then a partner with auditing firm Deloitte & Touche, jumped at the opportunity to help take the small, family-run company public to raise the money to build more casinos. The rest, as they say, is history.

"I took a cut in pay to work for Frank, but I really believed in his vision of the company," said Christenson, who leaves the company today after 17 years.

Station Casinos is entering yet another era as it goes private in coming months in a management-led buyout. Christenson, who owns more than 400,000 Station shares, said the transition presented a good opportunity for him to move on. He says he has no definite plans but will have plenty of opportunities to join casino ventures as they arise.

"I feel like I've done everything I can do as the CFO of a company," he said. "I've probably done just about every financing that you could do."

And in the course of that, the company became a Wall Street darling by successfully putting all of its chips in one basket - the Las Vegas market.

"At some level it surpassed my expectations," he said. "I literally bet everything I could, my family's well-being and my kids' education, on this company. And I'm glad I made that bet."

When it appeared Las Vegas could land the Montreal Expos baseball team as part of a company's plan to build a stadium behind Bally's, casino infighting and an unwillingness to rely on tax money soured the deal.

Less than three years later, on April 23 Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman will make a pitch to the NBA. Little appears to have changed save for a supposed willingness by NBA Commissioner David Stern to relax his position banning wagering on all NBA games as a condition of locating a team here - a price casinos won't pay.

What also hasn't changed is a 1985 regulation allowing a team to petition gaming regulators to prevent wagering on specific sporting events. Adopted after the Utah Jazz played a few home games in Las Vegas and most recently used to host last month's NBA All-Star game, the rule could be used to remove a team's home games from the boards, supposedly pacifying the league's anti-gambling stance.

What has changed, Goodman says, is casino operators' united front in supporting a team that could attract high rollers with luxury sky boxes.

Addressing the gambling issue won't resolve the tricky matter of where to locate a stadium and how to finance it. Goodman wants a stadium downtown, but deep-pocket Strip operators may prefer it in the growing "South Strip" region.

Controversy, jockeying interests and a good deal of uncertainty always seem to accompany the courtship for a major league team, said Don Hinchey, a spokesman for sports marketing and sponsorship firm the Bonham Group in Denver. Hinchey was involved in the effort to land the Colorado Rockies, whose stadium was built in a blighted area of lower downtown that was dramatically transformed into a thriving entertainment district.

With the still-closed Lady Luck casting a shadow over downtown's potential, Goodman is nevertheless upbeat about meetings a few months ago with investment bankers and hedge-fund managers in New York. The mayor met some of the biggest names on Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns and Carlyle Group, about investing in downtown properties. Las Vegas officials expect to continue spreading the gospel in New York as well as inviting investors to Las Vegas.

The mayor's office has invited several New York investors to watch next weekend's Vegas Grand Prix spectacle from a VIP box.